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The Inner Quarters and Beyond: Women Writers from Ming Through Qing. Edited by Grace S. Fong and Ellen Widmer. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Pp. xiv + 431. $185.00 (hardcover).
Over one decade ago, the publication of two pathbreaking volumes -- Writing Women in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) and Chinese Women in the Imperial Past: New Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 1999) -- illuminated a new research field in Chinese studies. The Inner Quarters and Beyond brings together contributions from leading scholars in late imperial history, sociology, literature, and cultural studies, and marks a new stage in the study of women writers in late-imperial China.
Grace Fong's introduction summarizes the rich scholarship on Chinese women's literary culture, especially in the West. As she indicates, the whole project of "re(dis)covery" of women writers and their texts in pre-Republican China was first addressed in the 1980s by Charlotte Furth; later Dorothy Ko and Susan Mann's research on women's culture in pre-modern China provided substantial materials and theoretical frames. With increased access to women-authored texts, more scholars have been encouraged to study women's literature. Current research has "led to new critical and methodological approaches, reoriented and shaped research agendas, and shifted the terms of historical inquiry. The results have yielded some of the most exciting historical, literary, and interdisciplinary scholarship both in the West and greater China" (p. 2).
Women's writing practices crossed the boundary between the...